The exciting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
